Monthly Archives: April 2009

“I was sent to the box…”

April 3, 2009
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(Sorry about the auto-play on the video. I fixed that too. I know it’s annoying.) I was a teacher long before I became a parent. In fact, I balked at parenthood for a long time at least partly BECAUSE I was a teacher: “Why don’t you have kids, Mr C?”  “I do. I have 150 of you every day.” Luckily, I was finally persuaded, and now I have a wonderful son. This was when he was four: My boy is almost 10 now. In two years, he will most likely be in my class. I’m not sure how that’s going to play out. If you’re still reading this blog then, you’ll find out as I do. But I think I got a taste the other evening. We were having dinner, and the boy was chewing with his mouth open, a definite no-no around Mom. She’s talked to him about it countless times – sorta like what we do all day every day, except about topic sentences and using paragraphs for God’s sake – and now she’d had enough. Last time, she had threatened to send him outside to eat with the dog if he continued to eat like one. So

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I’m back, baby. (Though not officially.) Also: RaffleKing Jr.

April 2, 2009
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I’m back, baby. (Though not officially.) Also: RaffleKing Jr.

I think my sad, tragic tale of woe is nearly over. Recap: Last Sunday, a palm branch fell from 20 feet up (while I was trimming the tree), and impaled my left hand with three spikes. The pic below illustrates what I mean by spikes. That is not me, but those spikes are dead-ringers for the ones in my hand. I pulled out two very similar to C and a portion of one more, labeled A, right after it happened. What I didn’t know was that a piece (“B”) was still in there. Until Thursday, when the swelling went down enough to notice. Last Thursday, the Doc in the Box pulled part B out of the back of my hand. After four days. Every day since then I’ve had a hole in my hand swabbed out  (rather forcefully), and packed with gauze. I was supposed to see the hand specialist yesterday, but got bumped by somebody else’s emergency surgery.  Ditto today. And now the gauze has come out, and hole’s closed up, and it looks sorta almost normal. But I’m supposed to actually see the specialist tomorrow to make sure. But I’m feeling pretty good, and I have some new

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Random Featured Post

You Gotta Have a Shtick (or a stick).

One of the things I like to say about teaching junior high is down at the bottom of this page in the footer. You’re too lazy to scroll, aren’t you? Fine. “Five shows a day, 180 days a year.” And there aren’t many crowds tougher than 7th graders. “This is boring.” The worst of all sins. Most of us who teach junior high have a shtick. A role we play, some isms we like to use again and again. Idiosyncrasies we play up for entertainment/attention value (oh the sharing I get when we talk about that word idiosyncrasy during “Monsters are Due on Maple Street“). The key is to make the shtick such a natural part of the classroom routine, that it doesn’t distract too much. Well, sometimes we need the distraction. There’s the Raffle King. There’s the Timer. There are the clickers. The Cage. Mental Floss. Nutty videos. MYOB. All of these are stalwart features of my classroom shtick. And as of a few years ago, there’s also the Quiet Stick. (four or five years ago – me visiting another teacher’s classroom before school) “Leenie! What the shiggy are you doing? Where’d you get this, and WHY ARE YOU [...]

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Mr. Coward has been teaching on the beautiful central coast of California since 1989.

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Recent Comments

  • mrC commented on It’s Go Time!@Sarah-Most excellent! Keep up the good work, and don't let any of them talk you out of it. Glad to hear your kids recognize the value too. Fight the good fight!
  • Mrs. M~ commented on Illin’Feel better soon! There is nothing worse than being at school and trying to be "on" when you feel like death.
  • Sarah commented on It’s Go Time!I just came across your blog...I am a second year teacher and I am currently reading The Outsiders aloud to my seventh graders. I read it to them last year, too. I catch a lot of criticism for reading it to them...but they LOVE to have me read to them. I actually had a group
  • joan commented on Illin’I'm on day two of out-with-the-crud. I needed the rest. Hope you're in tip top shape by Monday!
  • mrC commented on “The Sub Used One of Your Sticks!”That one oughta be strung up like they used to do to horse thieves.
  • Heather commented on “The Sub Used One of Your Sticks!”The last sub I had left no note at all and broke the arm of my spinny chair by leaning back in it so far that he fell in the floor. The kids all said he was the best sub ever. I politely asked the school secretary to never have him sub in
  • mrC commented on The Future of Space Travel@Heather: Gawd I hate that. I think I even posted about it awhile back. @Kelli: This reminds me of high school. I went to a Jesuit high school (all boys) and for our Friday football rallies, we would import cheerleaders from other schools to be a part of the rally. And the girls would always begin
  • Heather commented on The Future of Space TravelMy eighth graders just have the habit of prefacing every question with, "I have a question." And announcing "I'm done" when they complete an assignment.
  • Kelli commented on The Future of Space TravelIs it bad that I sometimes start my stories with "Okay, so...."...? I guess the kids have rubbed off on me. Sigh.
  • Kelli commented on Blogging the Scoring Session (Part I)Ugh! Been there. I have been to those "Scoring and Rubric" type meetings in two different states now... Not fun, and not entirely informative, either.
  • Meg commented on No Groove Yet (Also: The Giver and No Homework Returns)There was a district I student taught in that hand the no fail policy. I child could not be held back a grade, even if they did absolutely nothing the whole year, until they were in high school. It took most of the middle schoolers about 3 seconds to realize they didn't have
  • Kelli commented on No Groove Yet (Also: The Giver and No Homework Returns)You know, that whole "no-zero" policy goes hand-in-hand with the "no-failure" or "no-retention" policy, and my school district is a definite contributor to this madness. I can understand the desire to stop giving zeros and MAKE the kids do the work (giving countless opportunities until successful), but I have been in a situation where
  • commented on Obligatory Santa VideoWe have an unofficial "no zero" policy. It takes a little extra effort on the teacher's part to get all of the students to complete their assignments but we have made it work. The thing that was most helpful was instituting a "homework detention" that is separate from discipline detention. If a

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